There, indeed, the fight was still plainly raging, and hence, quitting the square, they attempted to take the garrison in reverse, by attacking the ramparts from the town-side, but they were received with a rolling musketry, driven back with loss, and resumed their movement through the streets. At last the breaches were abandoned by the French, other parties entered the place, desultory combats took place in various parts, and finally general Viellande, and Phillipon who was wounded, seeing all ruined, passed the bridge with a few hundred soldiers, and entered San Cristoval, where they all surrendered early the next morning upon summons to lord Fitzroy Somerset, who had with great readiness pushed through the town to the draw-bridge ere they had time to organize further resistance. But even in the moment of ruin the night before, the noble governor had sent some horsemen out from the fort to carry the news to Soult’s army, and they reached him in time to prevent a greater misfortune. Now commenced that wild and desperate wickedness, which tarnished the lustre of the soldier’s heroism. All indeed were not alike, for hundreds risked and many lost their lives in striving to stop the violence, but the madness generally prevailed, and as the worst men were leaders here, all the dreadful passions of human nature were displayed. Shameless rapacity, brutal intemperance, savage lust, cruelty, and murder, shrieks and piteous lamentations, groans, shouts, imprecations, the hissing of fires bursting from the houses, the crashing of doors and windows, and the reports of muskets used in violence, resounded for two days and nights in the streets of Badajos! on the third, when the city was sacked, when the soldiers were exhausted by their own excesses, the tumult rather subsided than was quelled. The wounded men were then looked to, the dead disposed of! Five thousand men and officers fell during this siege, and of these, including seven hundred Portuguese, three thousand five hundred had been stricken in the assault, sixty officers and more than seven hundred men being slain on the spot. The five generals, Kempt, Harvey, Bowes, Colville, and Picton were wounded, the first three severely; about six hundred men and officers fell in the escalade of San Vincente, as many at the castle, and more than two thousand at the breaches, each division there losing twelve hundred! And how deadly the strife was, at that point, may be gathered from this, the forty-third and fifty-second regiments, of the light division, alone lost more men than the seven regiments of the third division engaged at the castle! [Sidenote: Appendix, No. VII. Section 2.]